31 MARCH 2016

Ø  Kingfisher Airlines Chairman Vijay Mallya has offered to pay banks Rs. 4,000 crore as partial settlement of the carrier’s debts and indicated to the Supreme Court that the atmosphere in India was too vitiated for him to immediately return. The proposal, submitted in a sealed cover on behalf of Mr. Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines, includes an assurance to pay Rs. 4,000 crore by September to a consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India.

Ø  With the aim to speed up innovation and research in India, the Health Ministry has amended the Drug and Cosmetics Act, exempting clinical trials conducted at academic institutions from taking the hitherto mandatory permission from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). Public health experts say the move is a setback for those working towards a safer, more transparent clinical trials regime. The once booming clinical trials in India came under the Supreme Court scrutiny in 2013, after at least 370 deaths were attributed to Serious Adverse Events (SEAs) during such trials. In September 2013, the apex court ruled that no new clinical trials be permitted until the regulatory mechanism was reformed.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here on Wednesday for an official state visit to Belgium as well as the 13th EU-India Summit hosted by Donald Tusk, European Council President, and Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. Mr. Modi’s day started off with meeting Members of the European Parliament and interacting with Indologists. The symbolic high point was perhaps Mr. Modi’s visit to the Maalbeek metro station, shortly after noon, where he laid a wreath in tribute to those who were killed in last week’s terror attacks in Brussels. One of the bombs exploded on a train passing through Maalbeek, killing, among others, an Indian national, Raghavendran Ganeshan, whose body was repatriated to Chennai. There was a lunch meeting with CEOs and business leaders that was followed by the remote activation of the India Belgium AIRES (Aryabhatta Research Institute for Observational Sciences) telescope, the largest fully steerable optical telescope in Asia. Upon arriving at the Egmont Palace for the press statement following the telescope activation, private media were told that Prime Minister Charles Michel had cancelled the event. MEA sources at the media centre at the delegation’s hotel did not seem aware of this initially. When it became evident that Mr. Modi was speaking on television, the press were told the session had been “reinstated.” An embassy source told The Hindu that no private media were present.

Ø  As leaders from more than 50 countries are set to discuss measures to prevent nuclear terrorism, the U.S. said the battlefield deployment of nuclear weapons by Pakistan was an enhanced threat though it has taken several other measures to prevent nuclear material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Senior U.S. officials, briefing journalists on the agenda and expected outcomes of the fourth Nuclear Security Summit, however, said the risks of nuclear terrorism have been substantially reduced over recent years, thanks to measures taken by various governments and agencies, including Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be leading the Indian delegation to the summit. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif cancelled his trip to the U.S. capital following the terrorist attack in Lahore on Easter Sunday.

Ø  ith Tata Steel rejecting a two-year, ?100-million rescue plan proposed by steel unions to save Port Talbot, the biggest of its steel manufacturing plants in the United Kingdom, and deciding instead to put its entire U.K. steel operation on the market, the country’s beleaguered steel industry has been plunged into crisis. Thousands of workers at Port Talbot, and in plants at Rotherham, Corby and Shotton face imminent job losses should the company opt for closure before a buyer can be found. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for parliament, currently in recess for the Easter break, to be reconvened to discuss the “strategic risk to the United Kingdom if it loses its steel-making industry,” the BBC reported. The government is looking at the option of a management-worker buyout of the operation, a plan that the unions had put forward to Tata Steel, and which the company had rejected. With the livelihoods of 15,000 steel workers and their families, and another 45,000 in the supply chain, at risk, the call for renationalising the steel industry has been raised by the unions and several parties across the political spectrum. The British Steel Corporation was privatised in 1988. Media in the U.K has quoted Mr. Koushik Chatterjee, Group Executive Director, Tata Steel Limited as saying that the decision to sell had come after a nine-year period in which the company had made losses of two billion pounds. Tata Steel in a statement attributed its decision to “deteriorating financial performance of the UK subsidiary in the last twelve months.” It added that global steel demand has remained “muted” following the financial crisis of 2008. In addition, the global oversupply of steel – a reference to dumping of steel by China – and “significant increase in third-country exports into Europe, high manufacturing costs, continued weakness in domestic market demand in steel and a volatile currency” are behind the decision to sell. Only last week, Tata Steel sold its two Scottish plants at Clydebridge and Dalzell to the Scottish government, from whom Liberty House will buy them. Tata Steel is already in the process of selling its business in Scunthorpe, U.K. to Greybull Capital, an investment firm. Roy Rickhuss, General Secretary of the steelworkers’ union Community, the largest in the steel industry has called upon the Tata management to act as a “responsible seller.” Tata Steel has made no commitment on a time frame to sell, but has indicated that it cannot hold on to its loss-making steel operations for much longer.